Karen in the Public Eye: Reviews & Press
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Permalink Reply by Kelly Page on
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Karen received a great review in the New York Times article, Karen, an App That Knows You All Too Well, by Frank Rose.
Karen is a fictional coach in a software-driven experiential art piece. Part story, part game, designed to be played over a period of days, it offers a deliberately unsettling experience that’s intended to make us question the way we bare ourselves to a digital device.
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Unlike most real life-coaching apps, this one displays video rather than text — a tactic that makes it easy to forget the distinction between what’s digital and what’s human. When you open the app, Karen (played by Claire Cage, an actress who has appeared on the British TV series “Coronation Street” and “Being Human”) starts speaking to you directly, asking a series of questions.
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Unlike most real life-coaching apps, this one displays video rather than text — a tactic that makes it easy to forget the distinction between what’s digital and what’s human. When you open the app, Karen (played by Claire Cage, an actress who has appeared on the British TV series “Coronation Street” and “Being Human”) starts speaking to you directly, asking a series of questions.
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Like actual life-coach apps, Karen starts off by asking about your emotional state: Would you say that you are sometimes sad but have a mostly optimistic outlook? That you had a happy childhood? That you get stressed out easily? That you try to think good thoughts no matter how badly you feel? Other apps, however, are unlikely to drop in a mention of their recent divorce — or drag you down the hall to peep through a partly open door at some guy named Dave who, she breathlessly informs you, is stark naked. Later, as you learn more about Dave and Karen and their emotionally complicated relationship, you’ll be invited to join one or the other of them in some rather unseemly escapades. How far will you go? The answer can be as revealing as anything you tell Karen directly.
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Nora Khan, from Rhizome Magazine played with Karen and wrote this article, Managing Boundaries with your Intelligent Personal Agent, about her experience. In it she really captures psychological tug of war that occurs between Karen and her as she plays along.
"Karen really just needs to know all about me so she can help me. Looking earnest, she says: I'm going to be honest with you, and I hope you can be, too.
However, she is slow to earn my trust. At first, her constant smiling feels manipulative, her charm transparent. Her story about splitting from her ex, Charlie, leaves me cold. I have no faith in her banal advice that the world is about the people we share it with; that gratitude makes you happier.[7]
When I am truly honest, she seems unequipped to handle my mess. She asks me how my childhood was. I tell her: it was unspeakably horrible, but I didn't run away from home. She replies, You're like Dave. He wants to stay put and work things through. I don't want to hear about smarmy Dave in light of my intimate story about my powerless child self. She strikes me as dense. I retreat.
In response to my Bartleby-like resistance, Karen begins to turn. She becomes more needy, sloppy, piteous, and desperate. At one point, we're on a balcony. She is tipsy and smoking. She asks me if she should go home with a man inside. I feel bad for her. I tell her to go for it. Elsewhere, she tests me with poetry (my Achilles heel!); she once sat on a golf course with a beautiful man until sunrise, and kept a photo of him squinting in the light. This feels real. I feel more willing to share my truths with her based on whether the fictions she tells me about her flawed self are believable.[8]"
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Matthew Tyler-Jones was involved in the playtesting for Karen as we developed her and took her through different stages of beta testing. He wrote this blog post, Getting Ready for Karen, about his experience playtesting Karen.
"Its a great piece of interactive art. I’ll go so far as to say the best interactive story I’ve played. If only because it manages to create a sublime sense of real interaction. I’m not making decisions for an avatar, like John Martsen in Red Dead Redemption, but for myself. I’m telling Karen about me, not about what, for example, Marcus in Blood and Laurels, might do. I can tell the truth or I can lie (in fact I shuffled uneasily between the two) but that choice is mine.
Do I change Karen’s story through my decisions? To be honest, I don’t know, I’ve only had time to play through once. But the illusion of true interaction was surprisingly effective.
I especially like the use of Lickert sliders to answer some questions, which allowed me to be more “true to myself” than the multiple choice answers available for the other questions. Karen’s in a nuanced story, and sometimes I wanted, but was unable, to give a nuanced reply.
It’s great fun, get it. Its free after all. Maybe don’t play it in front of the kids, Karen can turn the conversation on a dime to subjects you might not want them to listen to. And decide now what you are going to tell your significant other about playing it, because Karen will be asking about them too…"
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Can This Dysfunctional Life Coach Make You Care About Privacy Rights? Fast Company writer Sophie Weiner digs into the design and intent of Karen.
Karen is an app meant to get under your skin, more like a haunting immersive theater production than a demonstration of technical genius. Users primarily interact with the app by answering questions posed by the video avatar over a period of a week—questions which are pulled from actual psychological personality exams—culminates with a conclusive report based on the data it collects.
Karen talks with convincing authority about how to set your life on the right course. But a few days into the week-long experience, Karen begins to show signs that she's not just permanently cheery avatar—she's a person, and her life is falling apart.
In a reflection of the user, Karen presents herself as someone who can help you, but whose tumultuous personal life is beginning to appear from under the surface, according to Adams. "She's simultaneously being a professional and teetering on the brink of chaos." As a result, you're left questioning whether or not this is a person you should trust, and how much of yourself you should reveal.
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